online retailers, eBay sellers, etc. who make money via inflated shipping rates, classic or dud?

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like the ebay seller charging seemingly-very-low rates for dvd players, and then (in the small print) a whopping $35 for shipping.

there are plenty of ebay sellers from hong kong and china who ask $6 or even $10 for shipping one cd or dvd.

see also, columbia house music club (in fact, they lost a class action suit on this very basis).

obviously this is a case of "let the buyer beware," and obviously any intelligent person can figure out the scam right away and decide if it's still worth it. but it still seems like a fundamentally shady thing to do, if you ask me.

so: dud.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

i had a run-in with a woman at an indian appliances store recently. they were selling dvd players on their website for about $55, with one of those ridiculous $30 shipping deals.... so i went in and asked for one at that price in-store. she said it was "a website deal only," and that in-store dvd players were $80. hmph. (the end result: i bought my player down the street.)

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:43 (twenty-one years ago)

that doesn't seem like much of a run-in, though clearly it was a scam!

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:47 (twenty-one years ago)

classic when you use the "by location" search filter and pick it up in person, thus getting a really cheap thing, though.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:47 (twenty-one years ago)

that's what i tried to do! but she refused to sell it to me at the "web site price." eventually she got pretty testy about it, and i guess i did as well. hence "run in."

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

me: "so you make the difference by charging $30 shipping? that's not very fair."

her: "let us not talk about what is right and what is wrong!"

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:49 (twenty-one years ago)

i noticed on ebay.co.uk people seem to charge between 3.50/4 pound for shipping 1 record. this is crazy, but it always seems to be right at the end of the auction that i catch it, so theres no time to email and find out what the hell they think they are doing.

― ambrose (ambrose), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:56 (twenty-one years ago)

haha, did she really say exactly that?

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I'll give it a "dud with caveat."

Inflated shipping does suck and it probably most often affects inexperienced and/or careless eBay buyers, but ultimately: no one's obligated to buy from such Sellers and if $80 seems a fair price to one Buyer and not another so be it.

I once pulled the trigger too quickly on a CD purchase which was listed at $9.99 - only to turn out to have $7.00 of Argentinian shipping tacked on to it (oh, and they didn't take PayPal, so I had to pay extra to wire them money, too...). But it's just that sort of "learning experience" that has made me pause before nailing the "Buy It Now" button and refuse to buy from any such seller ever again.

It's the free market, ladies and gentleman. You don't give such Sellers your money and they won't survive on inflated shipping rates alone.

― nader (nader), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:58 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, she said exactly that!

nader: yeah, that's what i meant when i mentioned above that it's sort of a "let the buyer beware" situation. i still think it's sort of scummy to knowingly pad (sometimes enormously) your shipping costs to make back the money you will have "lost" by keeping your nominal actual-costs looking real low.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, 26 February 2005 17:19 (twenty-one years ago)

the whitney charges 40 bucks to ship a 40 dollar book

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 26 February 2005 17:24 (twenty-one years ago)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 26 February 2005 17:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I would say this is classic. I'm all for the darwinian weeding-out of people who don't read the fine print.

― Curious George Rides a Republican (Rock Hardy), Saturday, 26 February 2005 17:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Dud, because it makes more buyers think eBay is about 100% full of dishonest people trying to rip them off. I switched to putting flat-rate shipping. Amateurist, you can report people who put exorbitant s/h costs to eBay, that's technically "fee avoidance" since it also means they get to list cheaper (i.e. paying the listing fee for an under-$10 item while the opening bid with s/h included is really closer to $40). I did that once to this seller in LA who sold designer clothes for like $5 with $50-$200 shipping fees.

― daria g (daria g), Saturday, 26 February 2005 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

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